The Radioactive Question
by Al Evans
Summary: Not long ago Peter Parker told Mary Jane about the origins of his powers. That story has set MJ's mind ablaze and she has a few more pressing questions for Mr. Parker.


_This story is set during the Spider-Man comics published in the 1980s. It's set at some point in between Amazing Spider-Man #275 when Peter tells Mary Jane his origin story._

_This is my attempt to put some things to rest and it's also a kind of rebuttal towards Spider-Man: Reign._

_Please leave a review as I am keen for feedback._

* * *

Mary Jane stood outside the door to Peter's Chelsea's apartment.

She was hesitating and wondered to herself why.

She had a key after all.

She'd returned it some months ago when she came back to New York, but it hadn't been too long before Peter had given it back to her.

He'd said it was a matter of practicality and trust. Ever since she'd (not entirely comfortably) become Peter's confidant in regards to most things (including his life as a certain web-slinger) she had found herself in frequent (too frequent for her liking) situations where she needed to get into Peter's apartment. Whether this was to pass him civilian clothes, patch up his wounds or generally just check up on him, they'd both agreed it made more sense for her to have her key back.

And they had both agreed it had meant nothing more than that.

Not like the _first_ time he'd given her his key...

But at this very moment Mary Jane wondered if she should knock so as to not be rude and just barge in. She knew that was a strange thought to be having after all the times she had done just that, and Peter had been perfectly fine with it. And it wasn't as if she hadn't seen him when he looked less than flattering.

Standing there though, Mary Jane knew that her hesitation had nothing to do with any of that. She simply didn't want to go in because she was worried that Peter would be inside. And if he was inside she knew she'd have to ask him some important questions, the answers of which she was terrified of hearing.

She had a sudden urge to run. That urge was an old companion of hers, and not one she was necessarily happy to indulge. Now, as was the case many years before, she was faced with a door, with Peter Parker and with a chance to run. Despite her apprehensions (and downright terror), for his sake, she hadn't run from Peter back then. And this time, for her own sake, she did the same.

She knocked on the door.

"Just a sec" a voice called from the inside. Peter opened the door and gave MJ a friendly wave when he saw her.

"Hi MJ. What brings you to casa Del Parker?"

MJ covered up the fear she'd had on her face with lightning speed (she'd had had plenty of practice in her time). She adopted a small and entirely fake smile.

"Just...just passing through. Wanted to see how you were...So...how are you?"

"I'm okay I guess. Well...I'm okay for me. This whole Flash thing hasn't exactly been a walk in the park"

MJ remembered all too vividly when her and Peter's old friend Flash Thompson was arrested on suspicion of being the super villain the Hobgoblin. It had upset her so she knew it'd done worse for Peter who'd known Flash longer. Evidently Peter wanted to get his mind off it because he abruptly changed the subject as he beckoned her inside.

"Come in, come in. I was just doing a bit of spring cleaning. I know its summer but with me I take what I can get you know."

As MJ walked in she only now observed that that the heat and the stuffy apartment had served to make Peter quite sweaty. He drank greedily from a glass of water and placed it back on a counter. MJ stared at the glass, specifically the faint marks where his lips had touched it. Peter noticed her staring and misread her expression.

"Sorry, where are my manners? You want something to drink?" He went over to his sink and picked up a glass by holding it from it's top.

"No!" MJ exclaimed. Peter stared at her, surprised by her tone.

"Oooookay then, no drink for Ms. Watson."

MJ's composure had gone but she tried to get it back.

"Sorry sorry I...umm. I'm just not thirsty I..."

Her efforts fell apart when she eyed a tissue box on Peter's table and gulped. Peter followed her eye line and when MJ stopped staring at it to look at Peter she saw an expression of complete bewilderment on his face. When MJ spoke again Peter turned to her and wiped this expression from his face.

"I actually...wanted to talk to you about something that was..." MJ trailed off when she caught a glimpse of the door to Peter's bathroom and a quick look of fear passed over her face for a second. She tired her best to continue.

"Something...something important that had gotten me..." She trailed off again as her eye moved now to Peter's bedroom door. She felt ever so slightly sick at the sight of it. When she registered that twinge of sickness she felt immense shame and, for a moment, a seething hatred directed at herself.

_It's Peter...It __**was**__ Peter! How can you feel like this about him? He's your best friend. He used to..._

"MJ?" Peter asked with a curious and worried tone. MJ's mind was snapped back to the present. She inhaled and exhaled deeply through her nostrils before looking Peter dead in the eyes.

"Peter...the other day when you told me about...about how you got your powers..."

"The spider bite?"

"Yeah...the spider bite...the _radioactive_ spider bite, I...I only just thought to ask...are...Are _you_ radioactive?" She didn't break her stare and her insides were doing cartwheels in expectation of his answer. The fear which had slowly but surely engulfed Mary Jane ever since Peter had told her the other day about the origin of his powers now made her wait for an answer seem like years. Nevertheless it lasted only three seconds. Peter looked surprised to even be asked the question.

"What? Oh right, yeah I suppose it is an obvious question. No. No I'm not."

MJ still had a look of concern on her face, apparently not entirely convinced.

"How...how do you know?"

"How? Because I've conducted tests of course. I conducted some rudimentary ones not long after I got my powers. I mean there was minimal risk but why take the chance right? It is radiation after all."

Peter seemingly caught onto MJ's weird actions and sought to reassure her further.

"MJ seriously it's fine. If you're worried about being irradiated by being around me there is no risk. I wouldn't risk hurting you, or anyone else, if just being around me poses a danger of poisoned. I've had Reed Richards himself give me the all clear."

"Reed Richards?" MJ looked more optimistic. For some reason mentioning the name of the smartest man on Earth was reassuring.

"Yup" Peter continued. "See when I first got my powers I obviously played around with them on and off to test my limits and even to find out how they worked. That was how I figured out I could attune my spider tracers so they'd react to my spider sense. I mean I was 15 and a science nerd. You go through some complicated changes at the best of times at that age, but when you're worried you're going to maybe turn into a giant spider or something, you want to know what you're dealing with. And in my case, I wanted to know why I couldn't shoot webs or didn't grow eight eyes or something. Plus with my natural scientific curiosity I fascinated myself."

MJ gave an amused smile, which prompted Peter to smile back and continue.

"Well you can imagine how I was also concerned about my health due to being exposed to radiation. I ran some basic tests with the minor equipment I had and even some more sophisticated ones at a later date when I was able to access more advanced stuff.

I discovered my blood contained radiation within it and wondered about the rest of me. After all blood goes everywhere in the body so it wasn't a stretch to imagine that I had radioactive skin, saliva, sweat, breath...other stuff...But from the tests I was able to conduct, when I was looking for radioactivity I found nothing.

Somehow the radiation was in my blood and ONLY in my blood. I figured it was because the spider had bitten into a vein on my hand."

MJ looked quizzically at Peter now, her fear being replaced with genuine curiosity.

"But how could the radiation just stay in your blood? And how did you know it wasn't harmful?"

Peter leaned on the back of the sofa before carrying on, clearly enjoying his little lecture.

"Well the thing of it is MJ that the radiation the spider was exposed to was a unique form of radiation. It's not the kind of radiation you hear about which gives people cancer or radiation poisoning. It had been discovered and researched since the 1940s. When they found very little military application for it they let the general public know about it. The radiation could be controlled in a variety of ways and wasn't harmful so long as you didn't get exposed to it directly, and even then it had to be in massive doses.

A company called General Techtronics even created a machine which used and controlled this kind of radiation as part of genetic engineering experiments. That was the machine I visited at the science exhibit the day I got my powers. I mean if the scientists and authorities didn't have a good idea that this type of radiation was essentially risk free, do you really think they'd have allowed them to conduct an experiment using it in the middle of New York? Especially when anyone could just go and see the experiment up close without any form of protection; no lead shielding, no sunglasses, nothing."

"I guess not. But you didn't answer my other question. How does it just stay in your blood?"

Peter's delight and being able to talk science with MJ somewhat diminished when she asked this.

"To be honest I am not entirely sure. I mean I am something of a unique case. But somehow the radioactivity stays in my blood and only transfers elsewhere if my blood itself does and even then, the radioactivity is so low and sparse that you'd need a blood bag's worth before you found even a single radioactive particle. It's just a unique feature of my blood or of what the spider did to it, or maybe of the radiation itself. Heck maybe it's some combination of all those."

"So it's completely harmless?"

Peter's expression diminished further and he became solemn for a moment.

"Well...it's essentially harmless"

MJ gave an exacerbated sigh

"Uh oh"

"See, when I was a teenager Aunt May needed a blood transfusion and I was a viable donor. She needed it to get better but I really wasn't sure what the effects my blood might have. But at the time I was young and kind of naive, so it seemed like I didn't have much of a choice. I went ahead with it.

A long time after that she got sick. Turned out she'd absorbed a radioactive particle inside of her blood."

"Just the _one!_" MJ exclaimed.

"Yep. Like I said the radioactivity is low grade and sparse. But it was enough to endanger her life. I had to get her a pretty pricy item called ISO-36 which could cure her condition. It worked like a charm and she was fine after that. But obviously I never wanted to transfuse my blood to anyone ever again. Actually it was that incident which sort of confirmed to me the radioactivity stayed in my blood. I mean after such a long time the particle would have passed into the rest of her blood or irradiated more of her, or even made her sicker."

The fear returned to MJ's face now and she spoke slowly with a slight shake in her voice.

"So...just one particle is potentially harmful? But...I've touched your blood before."

"Sure but like I said you'd need a large amount of it to find one particle. Plus my blood at the time had had it's white blood cells removed. I am all but certain that those would have saved Aunt May from reacting badly to the radioactive particle. Heck the ISO-36 might have even given her some kind of lasting affect which protected her although it wasn't like I was about to test that theory out.

And besides all that, I think the particle only affected her due to her severe age and the fact that she was so fragile in the first place."

MJ still looked a bit frightened and clearly needed more reassuring. Peter moved towards her and took hold of her hands, bringing them up to chest height.

"Seriously MJ, to absorb any radiation into your system from my blood you'd need to have touched a large amount of it...without gloves...and when you had a large enough openings in your skin for my blood to pass into it. I mean you wash your hands after you've touched my blood right? You haven't had any big cuts in your hands when you've touched it have you?"

MJ tilted her head slightly in thought.

"Well...I don't think so. I mean most of the time, that's just common sense when you touch anyone's blood."

Peter shook her hands up and down as if to shock the truth into her.

"Exactly! The chances of you having taken any radioactivity into your system by touching my blood are astronomically low and even if you had either the white blood cells would protect you or your own system would. I mean you aren't old or weak like Aunt May, you'd be fine. And..."

Peter looked downwards now, almost like an embarrassed child. His voice lowered slightly and he spoke more softly.

"If you weren't...if the radiation was going to harm you or _was_ harming you...I'd save you."

He squeezed MJ's hands slightly when he said this.

"You would?" MJ had arched an eyebrow and had adopted a similarly softer tone. Peter looked up now and it was he who was staring MJ dead in the eye now.

"Sure. Id' get you ISO-36 or something else. I wouldn't let anything like that happen to you MJ."

It was MJ's turn to give Peter's hands a little squeeze.

"I...I know. And...I suppose...I suppose if that happened to your aunt, and what with _your_ massive guilt complex...you wouldn't let me touch your blood if there was any danger."

"Of course I wouldn't."

Peter was still staring into MJ's eyes when he said this. Suddenly a flicker of realisation passed across his face, as if he had caught himself stepping out of line somehow. He broke the stare at the same time as he let go of her hands. He went back to his glass of water and picked it up in passing before leaning on the sofa again. After taking a quick sip, he adopted a friendly yet breezy tone.

"Look...if it's really worrying you I could test your blood myself I have the, equipment for it."

MJ for her part had stayed glued to the spot, unusually unsure how to react to the last few moments. Now though she gave her head a little shake as if to snap herself back to reality.

"Er, no that's-"

"Or I could take it to Curt Connors or Reed Richards. I see them both from time to time just to check the radioactivity in me is still okay. Plus I see them regarding all the strange stuff I'm exposed to because you can never be too careful. Heck remember how I told you about the alien costume Reed Richards helped me out with not that long ago. I'm sure they'd be willing to help..."

For whatever reasons (and MJ had a good idea which reasons in particular) Peter was talking slightly faster than normal and heading into a rambling territory, cutting off MJ before she finished speaking

"Umm , I said n-"

_"...Or_ I could get some ISO-36 in, although I can't really afford it right now but as soon as I-"

_"Peter!_" MJ said, rather more loudly than normal. "I said no. You're smart. And responsible and...well... you're my friend. So when you say I'm okay...I trust you."

MJ had said this after her shoulders had dropped a little and she overall looked like her old relaxed self again. This seemed to calm Peter down a bit and he gave her a small nod accompanied by an even smaller smile.

"Thanks MJ...So...do...do you wanna do something tonight?"

MJ's eyes widened slightly and she turned her head inquisitively.

"What...What do you mean?"

"Oh you know. You wanna just hang out or go out or something?"

MJ didn't move for a split second before straightening her head and doing her best to suppress a flicker of disappointment.

"I dunno, its a little late." She said casually. "Maybe we should just watch a movie here?" Her eyes darted quickly to Peter's face when she said this but his expression remained neutral. "What you got?" She asked.

Peter went over to his TV and began examining some boxes scattered around it.

"Er, let's see. I have 'When Harry Met Sally', 'Friday the 13th' and...Godzilla..."

There was a long pause after he said this followed by an even longer one when he turned around to look at MJ. They exchanged a silent look of clear understanding.

"...Maybe we should just go out for dinner?" Suggested MJ

"I like that idea."

With that they headed out the door.


End file.
